OPINION: Where were my LGBTQ+ sobriety role models when I needed them most?

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Now sober, Sam Thomas argues there must be more recovery role models for the LGBTQ+ community

Sam Thomas is a writer, campaigner and public speaker. His memoir “Smashed Not Wasted” will be published by Guts Publishing on July 5, 2023

It never ceases to amaze me that certain people who congratulate me at sobriety milestones on social media were once telling me to “get a grip” when I was alcohol dependent. If anything, it amuses me that I managed to prove to myself – not to anyone else – that I’ve successfully managed to turn my life around, even after I was written off for being “wasted”.

When I get into conversations with people about my journey, they are surprised when I tell them that I didn’t drink until I was 22 and was in a detox rehab by the age of 30. In those eight years, I wasn’t aware that I’d crossed an invisible line into alcohol dependency until I attempted to stop drinking.

Believe or not, it took a mere six hours before I relapsed after completing my first 10-day detox. While I’m not a fan of making excuses, I believe one of the reasons I relapsed so soon was because I didn't know anyone who had been through any sort of recovery programme.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew many people who clearly had issues with substance use on the LGBTQ+ scene in Brighton – but nobody who’d ever done anything about it. In other words, I’d never heard anyone who was in recovery and shouting from the rooftops: “Sober living is possible.”

At what point I hit glorious “rock bottom” was debatable as I learned first-hand it has a basement several stories deep! In the closest I’d ever been to hell, it made many sacrifices to make recovery happen, including leaving the charity I’d founded for men with eating disorders in 2008.

Without knowing it, I’d essentially swapped my teenage bulimia for alcohol in my twenties with trauma being the fuel to the fire that allowed my addictions to rage on for two whole decades.

Following many A&E visits due to severe alcohol withdrawal, suicide attempts, four psychiatric hospital admissions and being “sectioned” by the police, I realised that only I could make my recovery happen - even if it would be lonely to start with. When I embarked on my fourth and final detox from alcohol addiction during a hospital admission in November 2019, a cog had finally turned.

Ironically, I’d come round full circle when I went to Gran Canaria on my own only four weeks after my last detox. If I were to relapse anywhere, it would have been on “Devil’s Island” as I called it because of the party lifestyle and temptation everywhere. It was there when I realised I’d been sober before, so there’s no reason why I can’t spend the rest of my days sober.

Often people talk about shame from addiction, but I never felt ashamed. For me, what changed the game in recovery was the realisation that the shame I was carrying was never mine to own. Other people’s shame – even if it was directed at me or my addiction – belonged to them.

Still, what I really needed to maintain my recovery was other visible examples of those who are in recovery. They say the opposite to addiction is community - and it’s for good reason.

Another hurdle I had to overcome was sustaining my recovery during lockdown. Without having been to rehab or engaging in any recovery programmes like Alcoholic Anonymous or SMART, I had to establish my own recovery programme. Interacting with groups online like #RecoveryPosse on Twitter and Gay and Sober, I have been to navigate my recovery.

Refusing to be anonymous has been essential in my recovery and I hope that by sharing my experiences will show others like I was all those years ago that recovery is possible.

If there were more visible LGBTQ+ recovery role models when I needed it, I believe I would’ve been able to embrace my recovery sooner.

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